April 26, 2008

I'll be moving into a new office this summer, and it already has me thinking about the new desk and how I want to setup my MacBook on the desk. Using a laptop as your main desktop as well complicates matters.Things I know:

The MacBook will be the computer

I'll place an external display as well (19" probably)

I want an external keyboard and mouse involved in ergonomic locations

My phone cradle is a must

I want to minimize plugins, so I'll have a USB hub cable, an ethernet cable, a power cable all in place.

A first question is whether I want the MacBook display below and in front of the external, or do I want it lifted up on an elevator.

April 23, 2008

I do hope in time to publish some of my formulated work on the issue of how human technological advance has (arbitrarily) altered the church's biblical theology. The invention of the codex (bound book) allowed for an eventual new approach to how one understands the canon as a single book.

I cherish the time I've spent researching in Wolfenbüttel where I spent significant time with the 1516 Erasmus text--the first ever printed Greek New Testament. Until the invention of the printing press, there had never been in existence two copies of a biblical book that were identical. The invention was a catalyst for a theological approach to the nature of biblical inspiration that could not exist previously.

The occasion of these reflections is the enjoying of Stephen Fry's documentary on the Gutenberg Press, now fully available online. You may enjoy it.

April 16, 2008

It is definitely the case that the world needs more blog posts that focus on one mood. Greek/Hebrew instructor ought to enjoy this posting... and it makes for good information for any of you with Greek students needing clarity about their English subjunctive use.

April 11, 2008

I am making available a Unicode to Legacy Font conversion routine I wrote last year.

This utility culls through characters of text on the clipboard and then converts any Unicode characters that fall within the Helena font characters into their Helena font equivalencies.

This has at least two uses.

1. If you use Helena in your text document, you can easily include Greek that you are pulling from another source, even if it is in Unicode characters.

2. If you encounter some Unicode Greek text, such as on a web page, you can copy it to the clipboard and then convert it to Helena encoding, suitable for pasting into the search box of Accordance Bible software.

There have been several note taking/capture applications in the last couple years that work towards complete sync between portable device, desktop application, web interface. This is what I want. And, I applaud the continued trend towards thinking this way. I want to be able to increasingly thing in terms of my capture and sorting of info/todos/etc in my notes, and then I can access those notes in whatever context I'm in.
Evernote is another addition and advancement in this direction.

April 09, 2008

If you have not purchased Word 08 for Mac, do yourself a huge favor and have a look at NeoOffice, now in version 2.2.3. We are now buying Macs at our church with no worries about extra expenses for Office products. I'm simply deploying NeoOffice. It moved me to make a donation today, and not only did I feel good about supporting the project, but received such a sweet autoreply:

Thank you for your donation to NeoOffice. As a result of generous contributions from people like yourself, we are able to fund many of the operating expenses that are required to keep the NeoOffice project running.
Your contributions will be used to help us to continue providing valuable services to the NeoOffice community such as free downloads, frequent releases, bug fixing, and support and testing forums.

Have I mentioned that I think NeoOffice is a very good solution? The toolbar icons are a little clunky for me, but the functionality here is just great, will get greater.

April 02, 2008

So, your student or colleague has sent you a paper in PDF form and wants your comments. This used to be a pain, for you couldn't write/scribble/cross out on the file, but passed notes back in another form (unless you had invested in 3rd party options, some very expensive).
Well, with Leopard, the Preview.app has become supercharged, allowing you to work wonders with pdfs, including adding pages, highlights, notes, and markings, that you can then send back to someone else who can view the comments, even if they're using Acrobat Reader on Windows.
Have a look at this recent survey of fantastic new features of Preview in Mac OSX 10.5.
Complete list of new and helpful features: